The popular Instagram application has millions of users around the world and was recently bought by Facebook for a whopping $1bn. The Instagram application was downloaded more than 5 million times less than a week after being released on Android, according to Google Play Stats.
The IT security and data protection company, Sophos, warns Android users to only download the application from approved sources like the official Google Play Android marketplace. Users run the risk of infecting their smartphones if they download the app from unapproved sources. If the application is installed from the fake application it will send background SMS messages to premium rate services, earning money for cybercriminals.
"Android malware is becoming a bigger and bigger problem," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
"Just last week, we saw a bogus edition of the Angry Birds Space game and it’s quite likely that whoever is behind this latest malware are also using the names and images of other popular smartphone apps as bait. Infected Androids are now effectively part of a botnet, under the control of malicious hackers. Android users need to be extremely careful when downloading applications from sites, especially when they’re not official Android markets."
Instagram currently sits at around 30 million users – using the Apple Application Store alone. It launched the Android version at the beginning of April this year and its founders think it can hit 100 million.
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